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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124940">And you can see (what’s inside of me anyway)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier'>asuralucier</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Ghosts, Haunted Houses, M/M, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Treat with Trick Elements, Will Graham's Family, cajun fried chicken as its own romantic dialect, cooking as a love language, twist ending</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:48:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,936</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27124940</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Will takes Hannibal to visit his childhood home in Louisiana.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trick or Treat Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>And you can see (what’s inside of me anyway)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/gifts">Nemainofthewater</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A big thank you to StripySock for taking the time to beta :).</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Oh, good. You’re awake, breakfast will be ready in a few minutes. These wings won’t take long to fry.” Will greets Hannibal when he finally ventures into the kitchen, following the  sharp, familiar smell of Cajun spice that had been wafting up towards his bedroom.</p><p>“...Breakfast.” Hannibal tastes the word on his tongue, finding it nearly like a foreign language. The old floorboards creak steadily underneath his feet as he approaches the stove. Next to Will, there’s a glass mixing bowl full of floured chicken wings, with what looks like the Cajun seasoning mixed through. Hannibal leans in and gives it a sniff, the strong whiff of smoked paprika, tempered by the delicate warmth of white pepper waking him up for the second time. </p><p>(It’s been the same these past few nights. Although Hannibal is grateful to have a place to lay his head, he has not been sleeping well, and he’s at pains to hide this from Will.)</p><p>Will, who always seems to be watching him with a keen eye nowadays. But now Will appears to be fixated upon the bubbling pot of oil in front of him. Hannibal takes the chance to step back from the mixing bowl, clearing his throat. “In what world do we have chicken wings for breakfast, Will?” </p><p>“Is <i>that</i> the hill you’re willing to die on, Dr. Lecter?” Will turns now and on his face is an unkind smile, as if he’s telling Hannibal in not so many words that he ought to know better. </p><p>To be fair, Hannibal agrees with him in theory, but it’s difficult to think when a strange tiredness hounds him at every turn, filling his head and the tip of his tongue with fog.</p><p>(In the more analytical parts of his mind,  which seems harder to reach now on account of the fog, Hannibal attempts to make sense of it. Briefly, he considers the handful of times they’d stopped at a pharmacy to try their luck with over-the-counter drugs: various allergy medications, melatonin, valerian root supplements once, out of sheer desperation and not anything else. Come to think of it, Will has always had better luck than Hannibal had during these inevitable sojourns, possibly on account of his natural inclination towards illness. Yet the idea that Will might use this odd advantage against him is nearly unthinkable.) </p><p>Still, this place is filled with fog. (Or is it dust?) It’s clear to him that the house has not been lived in for some time, and yet Will still seems to know where everything is, as though having reached deep inside his memory. The kitchen, with its cramped lighting and cramped everything else, didn’t seem conducive to cooking, even though Will appears comfortable enough preparing a meal in such adverse circumstances. Hannibal opens his mouth to say as much, but Will beats him to it, turning away from the pot of bubbling oil and reaching for him. Hannibal feels the merest weight of Will’s palm settle against the back of his neck. The clamminess of the other man’s skin is only a little alarming; mostly, Hannibal is all too glad to let the sensation redirect his focus. </p><p>There was a time, Hannibal thinks, when he’d been charmed by Will’s myriad of weaknesses, whether in body or in mind. But now, he can’t help but be unsettled by Will’s ill health. Where they are is a drafty place, with fog and wind sneaking in through every available crack. Yet Will stands barefoot and shirtless in front of him, like he’s immune to the elements. There’s a black gash across his stomach and an ugly scar curled around his left shoulder. </p><p>“Are you not cold, Will? Perhaps you should go get...dressed. I will make sure the oil doesn’t catch fire while you’re gone.” </p><p>“There’s no need.” Will shakes his head with a little smile. “She won’t let anything go too wrong in the kitchen. In a different universe, you would have liked her, Hannibal. You both like it when things go wrong just the right amount. Me, I’ve grown to see the humor in it.” </p><p>“...She?” </p><p>Will moves away from him once more, and he reaches to turn up the little blue flame licking at the bottom of the pot. Hannibal has to work to remember if Will had turned down the heat before, but he finds he can’t decide one way or the other. </p><p>Then Will says, “Anyway, I feel fine. Relieved, somehow.” Out of the corner of his eye, Hannibalcan see Will is still watching him. “It’s not like you to worry about me.” </p><p>“Relieved,” Hannibal echoes. It is not the word he would have chosen, but if he’d had his way, they wouldn’t have driven all the way down to get lost in the Louisiana bayous in a stolen car incapable of going faster than fifty miles per hour. He used to be able to argue with Will, to poke precise holes in his worldview and to fill in the gaps to his own liking. </p><p>All that is rather—difficult now, but Hannibal likes to think that he has never begrudged Will his own opinions or, for that matter, denied the man his strengths. Yet Hannibal has to concede still, that things are less interesting when he doesn’t have all of his usual tools to hand. </p><p>Hannibal asks, glancing around, “Is there any coffee, Will?” Normally, he doesn’t abide by such routines, but today, he feels like making an exception. In a word, it pairs well with Will’s sudden desire for an unusual breakfast. </p><p>“Yes, but you’ll have to make some. The coffee grounds should be…” Will drops his outstretched arm and pivots around on his heels. He comes face to face with Hannibal again, before raising his arm up at a slightly surprising angle, as if an invisible string were tugging at his limb. “—I see it, there. Third shelf, up. Up, see?” </p><p>“I see. Is there a coffee maker?” Hannibal follows up, a little hopefully. He’s already looked around and hasn’t found one. </p><p>Will reaches for the salt grinder, still intact despite a telltale crack down the middle of the old, well-worn plastic. As Will twists the end of the grinder, subsequently showering the top of the floured chicken in what seems like an avalanche of salt, he shakes his head. “You’ll have to boil ground beans in a saucepan, I’m afraid. My mother—mistrusted newfangled technology.  The pans are in the farthest cupboard, there.” </p><p>The kitchen is not large, so it doesn’t take Hannibal more than a few steps to reach the cupboard in question. One of its hinges is broken, so he is especially careful. The various pans look like they belong in this kitchen, scratched and neglected. Hannibal picks one out, and then straightens up again, coming to stand next to Will by the stove, shoulder to shoulder. </p><p>He only moves briefly to retrieve the coffee grounds stored in an old dented tin on the third shelf. Hannibal opens the tin to inhale; he thinks he breathes in more dust than anything else. The aroma of the coffee beans is profoundly absent. Hannibal opens his mouth to mention it, but then he decides to keep it to himself at the last minute. </p><p>*</p><p>Will is watching him again. “Is anything wrong, Hannibal?” </p><p>“We’ll need to go into town and get some more coffee tomorrow,” Hannibal says, determined not to make a face, or at least, not where Will can spot it. He fills the pan halfway with water and returns it to the stovetop. </p><p>“If you’d like,” Will agrees amiably. “St. Martinville hasn’t ever had a coffee scene as far as I remember, but perhaps times have changed. Maybe there is a Starbucks’.”</p><p>Hannibal ignores the jab and tips in a generous helping of either ground coffee beans or ground coffee dust into the pan, turning the bubbling water into a muddy, grainy liquid. He reaches for a tablespoon that has all but materialized by his elbow. It hadn’t been there before. Hannibal hesitates, but takes hold of the spoon, only half expecting it to bite him. </p><p>“Say thank you.” Will prods him with an elbow. This is punctuated by the gentle sizzle of a chicken wing being dropped into the oil, and he catches sight of the salt melting off the top of the chicken as though it’d never been there at all. The smell rising from the pot is not unpleasant, a slow warming heat, making the kitchen the hearth it ought to be in a home. </p><p>“Thank you,” Hannibal complies, but then he can’t help but feel a little needled, because if there’s anything he knows about himself, it’s that he doesn’t need to be told how to be polite. </p><p>“Not to me,” Will says.</p><p>“...To who, then?” </p><p>“To MeeMaw,” Will tells him, going strangely red at the tips of his ears. “—I mean, my grandmother.” </p><p>It takes Hannibal another second or two, but then he decides that it is probably in his interests to play along. He dips the spoon carefully into the pot in front of him and stirs slowly. “I thought you were speaking about your mother, Will. I apologize. My mistake.” Yet, Hannibal presses on, after a pause, "She <i>does</i> know that coffee makers were in use as early as the early twentieth century. Nothing newfangled about it, I would think.” </p><p>“If we’re talking about my mother, she wasn’t much of a cook,” Will says with a shrug. “MeeMaw was always better by a mile. But Ma made these mean wings, mostly on Sundays. I haven’t made them in years, but the recipe is imprinted on my brain. I couldn’t forget it even after I hit my head.” He laughs a little bit to himself, quiet and secret. “It’s funny what head trauma does to you—general you—I wouldn’t have had the nerve to make you this without it.”</p><p>Hannibal agrees, “That is funny.” </p><p>But then he becomes alarmed.  “You hit your head, Will?”</p><p>Will gives him another one of those looks, askance, but not quite suspicious, and turns his attention back to the wing in the pot, turning it over with a pair of tongs, so old that the enamel has all but peeled away. Eager to cling on to any sense of normalcy, Hannibal puts that aside and instead, finds it easy to admire the golden crust that has formed on top of the chicken, with bits of salt shimmering through. </p><p>Will says, “Once, I got lost in the bog. I was a kid, so it’s all a bit hazy, but I still have a scar, see? The doc said I cracked my skull clean open.” </p><p>So saying, Will puts down the pair of tongs on an old dish towel and pushes his hair back from his hairline, leaning towards Hannibal. The gesture is open, and almost inviting, and Hannibal can’t help himself. He runs a careful thumb over the thin, jagged hard tissue that runs along Will’s temple. </p><p>“How come I’ve never noticed this before?” Hannibal muses, mostly to himself. Also without thinking, he leans forward and kisses the scar. He feels Will hitch with surprise against him, and then the man relaxes. </p><p>“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” </p><p>“...But you’re telling me now, Will?” </p><p>“Or trying to.” Will breaks away from him a little abruptly. Hannibal is nearly offended, until he remembers that Will should be looking after the chicken wings. Will checks on the wing, making a rather satisfied click of his tongue; after, he fetches a clean, if slightly faded plate with a dizzying busy design and puts some paper towel over it. “I keep thinking I should apologize, after all. Being told something is possibly the least interesting outcome to you.” </p><p>Hannibal shrugs. This is not exactly untrue, and Will was always going to figure it out for himself sooner or later. Still, token resistance seems prudent at this juncture, he says, somewhat cajolingly, “Like you say, there <i>is</i> a lot I don’t know about you. Maybe it keeps the romance alive.” </p><p>Will reaches for the tongs and drops the wing sizzling hot on the paper towel. “Does it?” </p><p>“Certainly.” Hannibal nods. “Secrets and mystery. The oldest spice in the book.” </p><p>There is a loud clattering behind them, and Hannibal jerks his head around to see that a pile of crockery has fallen out of the cabinet. Had he forgotten to close it? </p><p>“Don’t worry,” Will says, a small smile in his voice. “You just made MeeMaw laugh. She never laughs.”</p><p>“I see.” How does anyone laugh in this house? Big, empty, and most of all, lonely. Hannibal feels that very keenly now, as if the knowledge were pressed against his shoulder blades by a ghostly hand. For an exercise in absurdity, Hannibal allows himself to imagine the hands of Will Graham’s mother. Skin too-harshly tanned by the unrelenting sun during the summer, with the occasional burn mark near her sleeves, as she isn’t always as careful as she should be, what with a young boy wreaking havoc about the place.</p><p>“Will you tell me something about your mother, Will? Did she burn herself?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” Will says, “but not on purpose.” A pause, and then he adds, “...Are you beginning to really see?” </p><p>Hannibal straightens up, as if he’s suddenly remembered himself. His pot of coffee has been on the stove for too long but miraculously, it hasn’t burned. He takes the pot off the low flame, and before he can ask where the mugs are kept, he spots a pair of them just by the sink. </p><p>“I confess, I don’t know what you mean, Will,” Hannibal says. He gestures with a mug in hand. “Coffee?”</p><p>“Okay,” says Will, agreeably enough, though his tone is oddly hollow, as if he is standing in the middle of a glass room. “Yes, she used to burn herself. But only every so often. Always by accident.”</p><p>Hannibal tips the pan against the rim of the mug and watches muddy coffee fill up to the brim. “I see.” </p><p>(It’s probably too much to hold out hope for some milk.)</p><p>“I think you do,” Will says. Will takes both of his hands once they are free, and Hannibal is suddenly aware that his own pulse is muddy and slow, like the sunken coffee grounds sticking to the bottom of the pan. “My mother’s been dead for years. The better half of a century.”</p><p>“Well, she certainly didn’t speak to me,” Hannibal says, a bit put off. “I merely…”</p><p>“Used your imagination?” Will cut in, to the quick and to the point. </p><p>A black, sodden silence falls between them and the only thing Hannibal can hear is the soft sizzling of the oil. “Will,” Hannibal forms the syllable slowly, willing it to stay in the air between them and not disappear. “What is happening to me?” </p><p>“You’re feeling the plight of others around you,” Will tells him, squeezing lightly over his pulse. “I used to do that too; it’s nice to have some peace and quiet for once. Were you ever worried about me, Hannibal?” </p><p>“About what?” </p><p>“Well, you know.” Will shrugs. “Whether I’d come back.” </p><p>“You always did. You were always yourself, Will. At least, with me.” There is a note of desperation in his own voice that Hannibal can’t seem to shake. He’s still whole, and conscious of his body, but everything else is slipping away from him. </p><p>“Or maybe it’s different when you’re dead,” Will says. “You worry about these sorts of things less, or say, not at all. People then, people now, it all gets to feel the same. It’s almost freeing.” He quiets, and then continues, his voice even softer, “I never did anyway, worry, or think too much. I was content to let my feelings guide me. Maybe that’s why I liked you, Hannibal, because you never did worry about me.”</p><p>Then Will steps back and gestures towards the chicken wing. “Will you try some? I might have put too much salt in. I’m beginning to lose my sense of taste.”</p><p>“Your sense of taste.”</p><p>“Just eat. Please.” </p><p>Hannibal picks up the still-warm sticky wing beneath his fingers, and he can’t taste anything else but salt. He opens his mouth to say so, but thinks this must be obvious. He’s always detested the obvious, it is a weakness. </p><p>“Have you been dead all this time?” Suddenly, this knowledge weighed heavy on him.</p><p>Will leans in to kiss him and the salt in Hannibal’s mouth is washed away with a bright tang of copper.</p><p>Blood.</p><p>“You broke your spine in two places, Hannibal, when we landed. And you cracked your head. Did you think you would live?” Will’s voice is fading, as though further and further away from him, although Hannibal becomes ever more determined to hold on to him. “If it’s the how you’re worried about, then I made a deal with this house. I could only do it because it was my home. The worst piece of luck. It’s a rather complicated explanation. But it hates being lonely, do you see?” </p><p>“I see.” Hannibal opened his eyes, and Will stands in front of him, seemingly rejuvenated. His scars are gone; there is a healthy pinkness to his skin. Or maybe that’s just his eyes playing tricks on him, but at least now he knows it to be a trick. </p><p>Will says, “You’ve always wanted me to yourself, Hannibal.” </p><p>“Once upon a time, I thought I did,” Hannibal agrees and steps in to kiss him, determined to taste the salt on his skin.</p>
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